


Tomione One-Shots Under 500 Words

by Colubrina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-30 21:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21146663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: A collection of tomione one-shots, all shorter than 500 words.





	1. Chapter 1

“I just want you. I don’t care if I break my heart.” 

Hermione rolled her eyes and pushed the button on the remote. If there was anything more unbearable in the world than these ridiculous television romances with their cookie-cutter bad boys, she didn’t want to know about it. The shows were all the same. The good girl, who liked books and would be pretty if she just let her hair down and took off her glasses, and the bad boy, who carried a switchblade and probably dealt drugs on the side. The death dealer and the bookworm. It was such a tired cliche, and so unrealistic. She’d never be so stupid as to fall for someone like that.

She sniffed, turned the television off, and pulled her chemistry book toward her with a sigh. There was no one in the coffee shop, so she might as well look over her homework.

The bell on the door rang, and she had bad thoughts about the timing of whatever customer had decided to come in now. He’d probably want the television turned back on. He’d probably want some kind of elaborate and annoying drink. He’d probably -.

Her brain turned off when she looked up at saw him. He was… not displeasing to look at, if by ‘not displeasing’ you meant ‘make your mouth dry and other parts of your body wet.’ How was it possible that bones and eyes and lips could somehow be arranged just that perfectly?

“Black coffee, medium,” he said.

“Right,” she said. She dropped her pen, knocked over her stool when she stood up, and almost crashed into the stack of medium cups. “What name should I write on it?”

He smiled. It was the sort of smile people went to war for. “Tom,” he said. “Tom Riddle.”


	2. The Cat Kills the Mouse

“It feels good, doesn’t it? Knowing that I will do horrible, unspeakable things for you?”

Hermione didn’t bother looking up. Her shoulders hurt from curling them around old spell books, and the oil lamps flickered too much. It gave her eye strain.

“Did you hear me?”

So. He was in a mood again. She marked the spot where she’d stopped reading, tucked a bit of loose parchment into the book, and pushed her chair back, stood up. Shadows danced on the walls, and darkness lurked in the corners. She missed electric light. She missed her own time, her own friends, her own world. At least this place, this place that wasn’t, hadn’t ever been, shouldn’t be, had hot running water. If it hadn’t, she might have curled into a ball and refused to go on.

“Hermione.”

Tom had narrowed his eyes. It was a look that made strong men tremble. She’d seen dark wizards fall to their knees and beg forgiveness at even a hint of the glare he was directing at her. She set a hand along his cheek. “You would do them anyway,” she said. “The cat kills the mouse regardless of who owns him.”

“You don’t -.”

She turned and walked out of the room. Her shoulders hurt. She’d been researching all day. Books were supposed to have answers, but in this world, all they did was spin out question after question after question. Worse, she wanted to follow them, see where they led. Could you do this thing? Was that thing even possible?

She wanted to stay.

Courting damnation for knowledge. Maybe she should have been Sorted to Ravenclaw all those years ago. She could go to this Hogwarts. Demand they put the Hat on her head. They wouldn’t dare refuse her. Was the answer still the same? Was she still the brave Gryffindor?

“Are you coming?” she asked Tom impatiently when he hovered in her study, blood still on his hands from whatever atrocity he’d doled out that day. 

He followed her. 

He had since she’d arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to breenieweenie for the prompt.


	3. Office Halloween Party

  
Hermione watched Tom Riddle down the drink she’d handed him at the annual Halloween party. He’d followed her into a back room as she giggled and flounced in her ‘sexy witch’ costume. Too trusting by far but, then, the ones who thought they were bad always were. That thought made her lips curve up into a smile.

“What’s so funny?” he asked right as the drug hit his system and he began to wobble on his feet.

“Abracadabra,” she said, waving the toy wand that had come with her costume. He fell on the last syllable. Such a pity. They’d find him in the morning, hungover, barely able to remember what had happened. Not a good look for an up and coming would-be partner. 

And the promotion would be hers.


	4. Immortality

“I do not think that word means what you think it means.” Hermione leaned over the text and brushed her finger across the faded ink. She immediately felt guilty. This book was so old. She should be wearing cotton gloves. 

As if damaging old books was her most pressing problem.

“Why?” Tom asked. He used the y_ou are adorable_ voice she hated. If she could cut the brilliance out of his head, she would. If she could cut his throat, she would. She thought about it often enough and had ever since she’d been tricked into this bargain. Trapped by an unbreakable vow. How could she have been so stupid?

She shook her head. Dwelling didn’t do her any good. She needed to find the answers for him, his own little research elf. 

“It’s an obscure dialect,” she said. “The usual meaning is ‘house,’ yes, but based on the colloquial vocabulary in the rest of the text, it probably means something more like ‘public field where everyone can graze their cattle.’”

“So not useful,” Tom said. The amusement had drained from his face, and she felt prickles dance along her neck. Human brains knew when they were in danger. He watched her shiver, and she could see him drink it in. He loved knowing she was still afraid, even now. 

He straightened up. “Well,” he said. “Keep trying.” She could see his skull when he smiled like that, and she had to force herself not to look away. “You have all the time you need, after all.”

He blew her a kiss before he walked out the door and back into a world where time passed, where people aged and died, where things changed.

People wanted to be immortal.

They were fools.


	5. Squinting

Tom watched the head of curls weave through the Dining Hall and tightened his shoulders as she stopped to talk first to some Ravenclaw. The boy had a spot on his cheek, and a trio of larger ones on his forehead, and the squint you saw in fools to vain to wear their glasses. What did he have to be vain about? He was hardly attractive, and the way he narrowed his beady eyes to peer at her made him look like a mangy rat. 

When the Ravenclaw laughed at something Hermione said, Tom curled his hands into fists until the nails dug into his skin. How dare he?

She stopped again to talk to a Gryffindor, and then another Ravenclaw, and by the time she disappeared through the wide doors, Tom’s tension had become so obvious Abraxas, not usually the most perceptive of his flunkies, asked if something were amiss.

“No,” Tom said shortly. She was supposed to meet him in ten minutes in the fifth classroom on the fourth floor, and he would have things to say to her. Oh, yes, he would. They had an agreement. They had an arrangement, and the arrangement and agreement did not include her flirting with every worthless sot that crossed her path. 

She’d fallen through time into his life because he was the important one, not the spotty Ravenclaw. He was going to remake history. He was going to make her a queen.

He managed not to stomp his way to the fourth floor and managed not to slam the door open, but he didn’t control his expression once he closed it behind him. It was a look of furious displeasure that only a trusted few saw, and those few were wise enough to be afraid of it.

“How dare you,” she said. She was pointing a wand at him, and he reached for his only to realize she’d already jerked it into her own free hand. “We have an agreement, and I saw you making eyes at that girl, the one with the brown hair who's always sniffling.”

“I was not - “ Tom began, but a cascade of birds had already erupted from her wand and were aiming their tiny beaks at his skin.

They hurt.

It took ten whole minutes to undo her spell without his wand, and by the time he’d vanished the last bird, he was covered in blood and laughing with the delight of the whole thing. She watched him without a word but, when the last bird disappeared, he could see her mouth twitch up into the tiniest of smiles.

“You’re wonderful,” he said as she handed him his wand back. “Bitch.”

“Love you too,” she said. 

He was still laughing when he pulled her into a kiss. He would make her a queen, or maybe -- just maybe -- she’d make him into a king. Either way, a future he wouldn’t squint at.


	6. A Useful Tool

Hermione ran her fingers along the taut line of his neck. She knew he hated to be touched and only his unwillingness to let her see that kept him in place. It was why she ran her thumb up into the base of his skull and let it sit there, half a caress, and half a casual reminder of what a good place that was to shove a knife. His ring sat there at the base of that thumb, too large for any other finger, the dark stone half-hidden by his hair. She let her hand shift so he could feel the cold metal against his skin. One broken curse later, and she had some jewellery, and a bit more. A leash.

“I missed you,” she said. The words were near enough to true, and they made him stir a bit. She hadn’t been by to check on him in several weeks, and she tried not to go that long for fear solitude would make him mad. Madder. Though perhaps she was the mad one, keeping him here like a pet.

“I doubt that,” he said. “I didn’t miss you.”

She shrugged. “But like calls to like,” she said. “We are one and the same.”

Tom Riddle wrenched himself away from her. “I’m nothing like you,” he said, half-spitting the words. “Mudblood.”

“You know that doesn’t bother me,” she said. She plucked at the chain around her neck and felt the weight of the locket swing from it. “We could be as one, Tom. Soulmates, even.”

Oh, the glower that pulled from him. She flicked a glance at the door of the Room of Requirement and tried not to gloat, though it was hard. “I’m Tom,” the time-traveling student had said, all obsequious charm, hands spread in helpless inquiry. “I seem to be lost.”

“Tom?” she’d asked.

“Tom Riddle,” he’d said.

“I know exactly where to take you,” she’d said. “Just follow me.”

“I’ll never agree,” he said now. “And you can’t keep me here forever.”

She stepped away. She had N.E.W.T.s to study for, after all, and Harry had made her promise to go to a Quidditch scrimmage that afternoon. World domination could wait another day. “Well,” she said. “Continue to think about it. We could be great together. Terrible, but great.”

She heard the bit of debris he threw hit the door behind her and laughed before she swung her bag over her shoulder and strode off, the Head Girl everyone trusted, the Boy Who Lived’s best friend.

He’d break eventually. Then with his prodigal skills and her ruthlessness, the world would be theirs.

Or hers.

But he was a useful tool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to slytherinbloodwhore for the prompt on Tumblr


	7. A Murderous Fool

“You’ve managed to insult me three times, and it’s not even 9AM,” Tom said. He shifted so the chain on one wrist sat more comfortably and regarded his interrogator. He remained less than amused that immortality meant that, Harry Potter be damned, they’d managed to bring him back again, this time to teach the Ministry of Magic all his dark tricks.

He had no intention of teaching them anything, oppressive little fascists that they were. Sure, he’d been after power, but at least he’d had the honesty not to hide that fact under layers of reports that had to be filled out and hearings that had to be had. He’d been more of the ‘kill first, hold a meeting second’ varietal of evil.

He shifted again and kept his face bland as the final tumbler in the padlock fell into place. They hadn’t let him have a wand, and the room had been designed to suppress magic, but he was the best damn wizard in centuries, and you’d think that people who cared enough about his knowledge to bring him back from the dead again, quite against his wishes, would have kept that in mind. He’d been wandlessly hooking and unhooking these locks for weeks, and now he’d finally solved the very last combination. 

The bushy-haired, self-righteous researcher turned away and made another note in her folder. “Mmm,” she said. “Was it being called murderous or a fool you found most objectionable.”

He looked at the back of her neck. She hadn’t seemed stupid. Certainly, she hadn’t seemed stupid enough to turn her back on a predator. Like the rest of them, she had too much faith in the chains that bound and the wand that wasn’t.

He pulled the manacles free and lunged across the room, fastening one hand along her throat and using the other to liberate her wand from her pocket. “I quite own being murderous,” Tom said. “But, Hermione Granger, I think you might want to reevaluate your opinion that I am a fool.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to tinyholesinthesky for the prompt on Tumblr.


	8. Snooping

“What do you think you are doing?” Tom asked. 

Hermione looked up from his desk. She had all the drawers open, files strewn about, and a coffee cup leaving a brown ring on the day’s Prophet. She didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed or embarrassed to be caught snooping.

“Abraxas,” she said. “I’m trying to find out how he died.”

“Dragon Pox,” Tom said. He began to gather the folders up, his irritation growing because she hadn’t made any effort to keep them in any sort of order. “That’s common knowledge.”

“But did you kill him?” the witch demanded.

Tom didn’t even stop what he was doing. She’d piled years of obsessive record-keeping every which way, and it was so out of character he wanted to hit her. Of course, if he did that, she’d likely set his balls on fire, so he restrained himself. “Why do you care?” he asked. “He’s been dead for years.”

“Did you do it?” she pressed.

“Of course I did,” he snapped. Honestly, she’d mixed the Malfoy folders and the Lestrange folders up so badly it would take all night to get them right again. “Are you going to help me clean this up or not?”


	9. The Problems Being Dark Lady

“You’ll crack eventually,” Hermione said. She leaned back in her chair and pried her shoes off, first one and then the other. Heels were so uncomfortable. The clothing was what she hated most about being Dark Lady. Heels and corsets and crowns that pinched and gave her the headache. Why couldn’t she be a Dark Lady in jogging bottoms and trainers? 

“Tom,” she yelled out toward the backroom. He was shirking again, off playing with that damn snake. “You told me you would help. Just gather the dissidents in, you said, and I’ll help question them.”

He stuck his head in the doorway. “Can’t you finish this one?” he asked. He looked over at the prisoner, hands tied behind his back and furious expression of defiance on his face. “Just throw a couple of crucios at him.”

“Crucio gives me a stomach pain,” Hermione said. “And it’s my monthly, so I’ve got quite enough of that going on.”

Tom made a face but relented. “Fine,” he said. “Go take a bath or something. Honestly, sometimes I think I have to do everything around here.”

She was halfway down the corridor when she heard him yell, “Merlin, are you going to just leave those shoes lying here? I almost tripped on them. If I fall and break my neck, you’ll be stuck running this empire by yourself, just so you know!”


End file.
